$4bn beckons for Milford

June 18, 2017

Milford Asset Management is closing in on $4 billion in retail funds, the latest figures from Australian research outfit Strategic Insight (SI) show.

The SI March 2017 quarterly statistics put Milford’s total retail funds under management (FUM) at over $3.9 billion, representing an annual increase of almost 21 per cent (and 4.4 per cent for the quarter).

However, both BNZ and Kiwi Wealth reported higher annual FUM growth with increases of 45 per cent and 22.1 per cent, respectively, over the 12 months ending March 31. BNZ also grew the fastest over the March quarter (up 10.5 per cent) followed by Kiwi Wealth (6.4 per cent), Booster (5.5 per cent) and Fisher Funds (5.3 per cent).

With the exception of AMP (9.9 per cent) and BT/Westpac (9.5 per cent) all of the top 10 institutions carded annual FUM jumps well above 10 per cent.

Both AMP and Westpac shed market share over the year, losing about 0.4 per cent each to their competitors. Despite the relatively lack-lustre annual growth, during the March quarter Westpac entered the elite $10 billion club, previously occupied by ANZ, ASB and AMP.

Growth was hard to come by for managers outside the top 10 with the ‘other companies’ category seeing total FUM fall by 2.4 per cent in the March quarter while eking out a 0.5 per cent increase for the 12-month stretch.

The ‘others’ share of the approximately $81.5 billion retail funds market dropped 1 per cent during the annual period to finish at 8 per cent (or about $6.5 billion) at the end of March.

SI says March quarter retail fund gross inflows fell 14.5 per cent to $4.8 billion but “year on year they still ended up 6.5 per cent”.

As expected, the KiwiSaver sector continues to dominate retail fund growth with an annual increase of 20.3 per cent (5.8 per cent for the quarter). Excluding KiwiSaver and traditional super schemes, the NZ retail funds market grew 5.1 per cent over the 12 months to March 31 and 2.4 per cent during the quarter.

At $40.6 billion KiwiSaver now accounts for just under 50 per cent of all retail funds, the SI figures show, compared to 46.7 per cent as at the end of March last year.